Popovich working hard to keep team fresh

Barring mishap, Manu Ginobili will be back in the Spurs’ lineup when they face the Nuggets at the AT&T Center tonight. A five-on-five scrimmage Saturday was the last bit of evidence Gregg Popovich needed before freeing the ultra-competitive Argentine from the restraint of David Stern-approved game night business attire.

How the Spurs managed to win 18 of the 27 games they have played this season without Ginobili is a mystery to many, though Popovich is quick to credit Tony Parker, the point guard the most observant know belongs in the Most Valuable Player conversation.

Popovich has been helped greatly this season by the deepest roster he’s had since taking over as coach in 1997. Ten Spurs average at least 20 minutes per game, including rookie Kawhi Leonard.

Popovich never has used so many players so consistently. You have to go back to 2000-01 to find a Popovich-coached team that had even eight players averaging at least 20 minutes per game.

No other playoff-bound team has more than eight players averaging at least 20 minutes.

Parker is the only Spurs player averaging more than 30 minutes per game. Charlotte is the only other team in the league with fewer than three players averaging 30 or more minutes. Bobcats coach Paul Silas, whose team has won only four games, isn’t managing minutes to keep his players fresh for the playoffs. He’s on a game-by-game search for any player willing to play hard and relatively mistake-free.

What the embarrassment of roster riches has meant for the Spurs has been the luxury of protecting players from overwork. Tim Duncan never has played fewer minutes per game than the 28.1 he averages now. Parker, at 34.3 minutes, is up slightly from last season because Ginobili’s injury demanded he carry a bigger burden, but if you throw in the Portland game in which he was an official “Did Not Play-Coach’s Decision,” his average is less than what he averaged in all but three of his 11 seasons.

Popovich has proven that when there is an important game for the taking, he will use his best players as much as circumstance requires. Duncan logged 41 minutes and 20 seconds in an overtime road win over the Clippers and nearly 38 minutes two nights later in a win in Salt Lake City.

Popovich says he thinks about his player rotations all the time, and this has occupied more of his time in recent days, with injured players healing and healthy players getting dinged a bit.

“I think about rotations every day, basically because guys are coming back,” Popovich said before Friday’s game against the Bobcats, when he determined he would wait to see how Ginobili looked in a five-on-five scrimmage before allowing him to suit up. “Kawhi went down, then Manu was coming back, and then he wasn’t. Then T.J. (Ford) was coming back, but he’s sort of back and he needs to get minutes. Then Danny (Green) hurt his shoulder the other night.

“We think about it every day, how we can keep the rhythm and not screw it up. That’s always there, always an ongoing thing.”

This will get even more difficult a month from now, when Popovich and every other playoff-bound coach begins to think about shortening rotations for the playoffs. The intensity of the postseason demands that each team’s key players take on even larger shares of the load, which is another reason the smartest coaches do their best not to wear down their stars in the regular season.

The Mavericks and Spurs have fewer player-games of at least 40 minutes than every other potential NBA title team, and if you think this is not significant, consider this: Last season, the Mavericks had only eight player-games of 40 or more minutes, also the fewest in the league. The Heat were among the leaders in 40-plus games with 90.